Remnants of Love
by vaderloins
Summary: He kept his word and in the end he succeeded in overthrowing Palpatine. He made her his empress, as he said he would. He ruined her life.


**Remnants of Love**

Love.

To Padmé Naberrie Amidala, a once naïve young woman raised on the softness of the ever forgiving fields of green and waves of blue of her peaceful home planet, love was simply infallible and unstoppable and the most powerful thing on Naboo.

And on the moons.

And beyond the very stars that litter the sky like diamonds encrusted in it's blue-black dress.

To that girl it was more powerful than the entire galaxy itself.

Every thing paled in comparison to the power of love.

Everything did.

All Padmé had to do was look around and she would _see_ love, she would _feel_ love. It surrounded, encompassed and embodied her and the worlds she called home.

She strove for peace, for justice, and for love throughout the galaxy.

With time she even found it in beautiful blue eyes that were brighter and more intense than twin suns.

As long as love survived out there every thing would be all right. She had been so sure of that back then.

Love was something Anakin revered with all of his heart, while it was something Emperor Vader regarded with equal amounts of reluctant yet stubborn fealty and at the same time repulsion.

He, Vader, had his vices, and his many faults, of this he readily admitted to himself at least - and in his sith mind so warped with power and lust he knew he didn't need another thing that could sway and hold control over him. It made him a weaker sith lord. It made him a weaker emperor.

With what ever remained of his heart untethered he was powerful, and he knew this.

But there bond could never be completely severed, could it?

Together they made an odd pair. An odd set of rulers of the galaxy they were indeed.

They were two very different monarchs, two different people with very different ideals.

It was never _not_ a doomed union. Even when they were both young and so full of love and joy the clouds were surely gathering in the distance.

In the end of it all Padmé admitted to herself that those bright blue eyes were gone, dulled by a mask. That true love was beyond the thing they called Lord Vader.

For the first time in her life love had failed Padmé.

To the porcelain empress of the galaxy it was clear all Emperor Vader could feel was pure animalistic want, with a handful of lust, and fierce yearning for domination over a person.

Maybe somewhere deep in the recces of his mind Anakin lingered and an ounce of undying love lay there secretly buried, but she rather liked to think it was all gone and that the man known as Anakin was truly _dead_. It made hating Vader so much more easier.

Vader's golden eyes were hollow and cold. Void of life and joy and everything she had once loved so dearly about them back when they were startling blue.

Oddly, on the other end of the spectrum, the son of suns knew he wanted nothing more than to have her feel love for him again.

To have her love him they way she did when they were young and before the Dark Side or Palpatine or broken promises. Back when it was _Anakin_ and _Padmé_. Not Emperor Vader and his sorrowful Empress.

It would add another complex layer to their toxic relationship that he so desperately wanted and craved, but that she more and more shied away from like the very idea was acidic to her perfect doll-like skin.

And it was. For she was pure white and he was the encroaching darkness threatening to stain her with his sins both past and future ones.

Sin so deep not all the love and compassion in the world could cleanse it off of her or him.

Vader never got his wish, for no matter how tainted she became she would not and could not love him like she did when her heart was young and unbroken. Back when her brown eyes saw only a young man who desperately needed love and would so eagerly give his away.

Emperor Vader never learned the lesson that the cosmos had laid out so plainly for him.

The lesson of which you cannot force love no matter how much might and power you may have. That even the purest and brightest of love can turn obfuscous given a skilled enough sinner with enough blood on his hands.

You can have dominion over a men and women, but a person's heart remains their own.

Padmé's lesson had been far more harsh a lesson to learn, and unlike Vader she learned it well.

Or maybe, just maybe, it wasn't the cosmos' laid out lesson to begin with.

Maybe it was just a twist of fate that brought her to where she was, but the semantics didn't matter now.

Not anymore.

The rule of two had always been strong, he told her once upon a time when the darkness was only slowly beginning to form.

By fate's great injustice it was only fitting then that the bride of the devil herself gave birth to _twins_. And though the pain wasn't any less agonizing it surprised no one, least of all her, when Vader murdered the weaker twin in it's early infancy.

Her _boy_. Her little Luke with soft blond hair and wondrous blue eyes.

_The rule of two is strong, Padmé. A master and an apprentice. There is always two._ _No more, no less._ He had told her again as if it would ease the pain she felt that was doubling her over causing her to retch as tears filled her eyes and anguish sobs filtered out of her throat.

He then removed her innocent Leia from her grasps with his filthy, bloodied hands. _  
_

Even though her daughter would live and grow up not even she would be hers, it turned out.

Leia would belong to the empire and to her dark father. Never to Padmé.

It was the cruelty of the world and of her fate to be forever chained to the her hell bound husband that helped her to begin to understand. It was little Leia who hammered the lesson in, however.

How unfair it was to watch your only living child who was conceived in love and born in light succumb to the darkness. To see caring brown eyes grow a shade of malevolent amber over time, and to slowly watch every trace of innocence and purity wane from her until she is nothing but a monster with an angel's face, framed with a throned halo of brown locks so much like your own.

_I helped to make you, but I cannot save you from yourself, my sweet girl._

With all this Padmé, the reluctant empress of the (_**their**_) unforgiving universe truly realized that _love; _infallible and unstoppable, that _that _kind of _love_ never existed to begin with.

* * *

_Remember how Anakin told Padmé he could overthrow the Emperor and that the two of them could rule together? This is basically what I was going for. Anakin still goes and stays dark - maybe more darker than before, and Padmé is basically living in a prison as a reluctant Empress. And I know some people would disagree with me but I feel like if Leia were awakened to the force she would be more powerful than Luke, hence why Vader in this story chose to train and keep her as apprentice. Which may or may not be a huge mistake on his part. Dark Side Leia is a huge interest to me, in case you couldn't tell. _

_Thanks for reading and if you liked it please leave a review or somethin'. It means alot._


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